Search Engine Optimization )SEO( is an uncommonly dynamic and broad field of marketing which is constantly changing and adapting to market conditions, users' search habits, industry trends, and other factors. As such, Search Engine Optimization facts that were true six months or even six weeks ago may or may not still apply.

Believe it or not there was a time when search engines didn't exist, at least, not in their present format and back then, there was little in the way of search engine optimization. We still received visitors, and some sites even managed sales! So how did we get visitors to our sites when search engines couldn't help and search engine optimization was totally unknown? Believe it or not, it was simple old fashioned marketing.

Yahoo! Search Marketing blog has an interesting article on what they feel are the " 5 secrets for managing keywords in your account ". Their '5 secrets': 1. Consider Your Customer The advice here is to consider 'browsers' and 'buyers' separately. Browsers are still researching whilst buyers have their cash in their hand ready to spend. But yourself in the users shoes and consider terms that 'browsers' may use along with terms that 'buyers' may use. 2.

Every now and then this little question raises its head and the same information seems to be broadcast. Search engine optimization for you images using the Alt - or using Titles? Problem is - it's always from the Google perspective. Google reads the Alt tag - end of story - according to Google : the "alt" attribute specifies an alternate text for user agents that cannot display images, forms or applets.

Getting the right keywords for your website, your product/service or niche can be a difficult job. There are many tools available that can help to sift through the millions of possible keywords and keywords combinations, however, sometimes nothing beats asking the potential customers. You don't even need to ask - often it is more a case of listening to what they are saying and what questions they are asking.

Chris McElroy, AKA namecritic left a comment on this morning's post USA Today Interviews Matt Cutts On Search Engine Optimization and I just had to take his opening line in reply. My post was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek response to his interview - perhaps my tongue was not pushed far enough into my cheek. The interview was pretty much a Google search engine optimization how to, although nothing of real interest was revealed - certainly nothing new.

USA Today carried an interview with Matt Cutts on 'How to drive traffic to your website' . It makes for an interesting read particularly if you are into search engine optimization as a means to drive traffic. A short precise of his comments on the topic: Search Terms On The Page: Find the search terms that people are going to use to find you and put it at the top of your page. Title and Description Tags: In Matt's own words, these two tags are crucial.

Many businesses ignore the power of blogs. There seems to be a suggestion that blogs and blogging in general demeans a business or in some way represents a business as being cheap. In fact in today's online world, businesses that do not use blogs are robbing themselves of reputation management outlets, customer relations interaction and a boost that blogs can give to search engine optimization strategies.

Keywords are one of the major underpinning keys to search engine optimization so does using a keyword in your domain name have any affect? Scott Boyd writing at SmallBusinessNewz thinks not. We all know that keywords play an important role in search engine optimization and most webmasters include their domain name and variations of it in their list of keywords. New webmasters are often advised to select domain names closely related to their products,

Search engine optimization can see your pages listed highly on the search results pages, this can result a decent flow of traffic. If this traffic is landing and disappearing quickly - delivering a high bounce rate - then there are several options available to remedy this problem. The first issue is whether or not users are finding your pages using the wrong keywords. If your site is designed to promote "holidays in Florida",

An interesting observation of the much vaunted icahnreport.com that finally saw ink on screen this last week. For the preceding five months is was totally devoid of content - although many had been waiting for its debut post. What I have found interesting is, despite the total lack of content, the blog has achieved quite a lofty PR of 5. What is it going to achieve with content?

SEO is as much about observing what others are doing as it is doing yourself so Google's latest offering, Trends for Websites, will be a big hit with SEO proponents. By entering a domain name into Google Trends, it will return traffic, search and geographic data for that site. Trends for Web Sites will show sites related to the domain; it will also show searches that are correlated to the domain name and if you are logged into Google,

People often confuse search engine optimization and search engine marketing. The two are very similar and there is a real blurring at the edges, however, in a nutshell SEO and SEM can be explained as follows: Search Engine Optimization: SEO is all about making your 'blog or website more appealing to the search engines than your competition. SEO includes not only changes to the structure and code of your 'blog or website, but also to the words on all your web pages.

Firefox, the search engine optimization expert's best friend has finally released version 3.0 of their browser software with has been reported as a world record number of downloads in one day. This browser is search engine optimization friendly due in no part to the number of tools and add ons that make our day that little bit easier. There are certainly more tools and functions than IE. I am normally loathe to install a 3.

Search engine optimization is a process of ensuring each web page has been optimized to gain highest position possible in the search results pages. A web page is often only one of many that makes up a complete site. A sitemap is created to tell the search engines exactly which pages make up your site and how often they should be revisited due to updates. The sitemap is written using the 'XML' markup language as it provides a structured,

Here is a quick question. Should all the images used on your site receive the same treatment when it comes to search engine optimization? By all images I mean everything. Little gifs like arrows or bullets along with larger photos and graphics all fall into the image category and could all receive the same search engine optimization strategies. The answer is fairly straightforward.

The object of a search engine optimization campaign is to get to the top of the search results pages for chosen keywords. To get to the top infers there is a list and that list is made up of all the sites on the web that are using those keywords. To get to the top of that list, you need to know who you are competing against and how well their search engine optimization program is. The search engines themselves make this task fairly easy to undertake.

Web traffic is provided by search engines like Yahoo!, MSN and Google - the top three. If your website cannot be found by the search engines then your content cannot be indexed into their databases so losing any potential search traffic. Most webmasters agree the life blood of most websites is the free traffic provided these search engines following search queries from users. Investing in a little search engine optimization can deliver a huge increase in traffic over time.

For all of you out there launching a business whether it is e-commerce or brick and mortar need to think twice before you try to pull a fast one on your customer. If you have never heard of a website called Rip Off Report than you should take the time to read this because your business could crumble overnight with one negative post on this site.

In recent posts I have looked at search engine optimization and link building and the effect it has on search results. With these posts in mind it was interesting to read a post on SEOmoz reporting on an interview with Matt Cutts . I wont rehash the interview itself, however there were a number points that I thought were interesting when it comes to search engine optimization and link building. The first point that I found interesting related to Digg,